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From: ftilley@indirect.com (Felix E. Tilley Jr.)
Subject: Loss of Initial Sigma in Ancient Greek
Keywords: greek,sigma,loss
Message-ID: <D8t3M6.Bur@indirect.com>
Sender: usenet@indirect.com (Internet Direct Admin)
Summary: How did ancient Greek lose initial sigma in many words?
Organization: Internet Direct, indirect.com
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 03:42:05 GMT
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Lines: 45



                LOSS OF INITIAL SIGMA IN ANCIENT GREEK


How or when did Ancient Greek lose the initial sigma in such English 
cognates as SIX or SEVEN?  If you don't know HOW it happened, do you 
know WHEN it happened.

It is fairly systematic, but it does not always occur.  Does anyone 
know of any rule akin to Werner's Law that would explain it's 
occurence.

If you post your replies to this newsgroup, I must tell you that I 
can't always monitor this news group, as the Internet gods don't 
always allow it.  You might consider replying via e-mail as well:

I am Felix Tilley
ftilley@indirect.com

Please forgive me if I make some spelling errors.  I don't have a 
spell checker with me, at least not for Latin or Greek.

I am posting this in US ASCII.  If you post in other text formats, I 
may not be able to read it.

Consider these words:

English           Latin           Greek

six               sex             hexa
seven             septa           hepta 
sit,seat,settle   sedare          hedra
same              similis         homo
salt              sal             hals
sun               sol             helios
                  sanguis         haema
                  semi            hemi
                  sub             hypo
                  super           hyper

I had a longer list, but I had a disk crash, and I reconstructed 
this from memory.


